What happened
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar yesterday announced a deal with Ukraine that should clear the way for Kyiv to begin the process to join the European Union. Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orbán, had “fiercely opposed Ukraine’s EU accession,” Politico said, and used Hungary’s veto in the 27-member bloc to thwart Ukraine and Moldova’s “twinned” membership bids, “ostensibly over minority rights for Hungarians living in Ukraine.”

Who said what
Hungary’s “shift in position unfolded suddenly” yesterday during a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels, Euronews said, and after weeks of negotiations between Hungary and Ukraine. Magyar said Kyiv had agreed to expand the “linguistic, educational, cultural and political rights of the 100,000-strong Hungarian minority” in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia region.

What next?
With Hungary’s objections lifted, accession negotiations are expected to “officially move to the next stage” at a June 15 meeting between the EU, Moldova and Ukraine, Politico said. Still, Magyar yesterday “reiterated his opposition to fast-track Ukraine’s accession,” Euronews said. “If Ukraine manages to close all 33 accession chapters within 10 or 15 years,” he said, Hungary “will hold a legally binding referendum on the issue.”

What happened
New World screwworm, a deadly flesh-eating parasite, has been confirmed in a calf in south Texas, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said late yesterday. It was the first instance of the fly-borne parasite found in U.S. livestock since 1966, when the insect was eradicated from the country after an intensive campaign. 

Who said what
Screwworms are “parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in open wounds” on “any work-blooded animal,” hatching “hundreds of screwworm larvae” that “use their sharp mouths to burrow through living flesh, eventually killing their host if left untreated,” Reuters said. Human cases are “rare,” and the fly “poses no food safety issues.” 

The U.S. has spent months preparing for the parasite’s arrival, sealing the U.S. southern border to livestock for more than a year. Endemic parts of Latin America, screwworms have been spreading north through Mexico since 2024. If “more screwworms are found beyond the single case,” The New York Times said, it “could devastate the American cattle industry.” America’s cattle herd is “already at its smallest since the 1950s,” The Wall Street Journal said, and the “tight” market has “helped drive beef prices to record highs for U.S. consumers.”

What next?
The USDA is “taking immediate action” to “contain” and “eradicate this case” of the parasite, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said, including creating a 12.4-mile “infested zone” quarantine around the infected calf, increasing monitoring and releasing millions of sterilized male New World screwworm flies to shrink the population.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a report from the MapBiomas monitoring network. That’s “good news” for Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who made the fight against deforestation a “central tenet” of his reign, said France24. But the news isn’t unequivocally positive.

South America’s biggest country lost 2.4 million acres of native vegetation last year, down 20.6% from 2024, according to the report. Deforestation fell by 23.5%, and reductions were recorded across Brazil’s six major ecosystems.

Even so, the rate of Amazonian destruction remains “breathtaking,” said France 24. In the world’s largest rainforest, five trees are still chopped down every second.

As the largest tropical rainforest on the planet, the Amazon absorbs more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to offset the effects of human greenhouse gas emissions. But agriculture, wildfire, logging and mining are stripping it of its powers, with agriculture accounting for 99% of vegetation loss across the country.

If deforestation and global warming “continue unchecked,” the Amazon could begin transitioning to a “degraded grassland-like ecosystem in just a few decades,” said The New York Times. The consequences of an Amazon “tipping point” are “catastrophic for the entire planet,” said Bernardo M. Flores, an ecology researcher at Spain’s University of Santiago de Compostela. So “we need to be careful not to get anywhere near those risks.”